"The change of lead [in the BBC drama Our Girl] isn’t the only thing that’s new for season two. The action sis switching from war-torn Afghanistan to Kenya, where Michelle plays an army medic on duty in a vast refugee camp."

I'm chuffed. Now, that's a nice picture, but I've got a better view of her backside here. And if anyone claims that I've got too much of a prurient interest in Michelle (well, I probably do, but that's beside the point), remember that this picture was taken by her then very newly-wed husband, Mark Wright.

"Rather, what really matters here is that Trump is signaling his possible intention to do maximum damage to the party if he is denied the nomination, through whatever means he has at his disposal.

We simply don’t have any idea yet how much damage Trump can do to the Republican Party. It could go well beyond denying Republicans the White House. If a raging Trump, having lost the nomination at a contested convention, urges millions of his followers not to vote Republican, it could cause large numbers of GOP voters to sit out the election, potentially rupturing their plans for holding their Senate majority."

Anything that puts Mitch McConnell out of the Senate majority leadership job is good in my book.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

A few years ago, it was somewhat problematic that many TV weather forecasters didn't understand climate change, or worse, didn't believe it was happening, and didn't want to take a stand on the basics of how humans are contributing to it. So this lack of understanding and comprehension on their part could lead them have influenced their watchers with a lack of certainty on the actuality of, and the causes of, climate change.

"Some 99 percent of U.S. weathercasters — those who communicate weather forecasts on TV or radio, but who aren’t always trained meteorologists — accept the fact that climate change is happening, according to preliminary findings from a George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication study released Thursday.

Sounds good, right? Well, there's still a bloc that thinks most or all of the observed change is natural.

"However, skepticism persists even among AMS members, a group that tends to have more trained weather scientists. In fact, about 18 percent of AMS members attribute climate change mostly — or entirely — to natural events. For weathercasters, that figure is slightly higher — 24 percent, according to the survey. Maibach said that’s natural."

Progress is good. A few more El Niño winters like this one, and there will be even less who think it's all natural.

I was recently asked if I write sonnets about subjects other than love and romance and sex and erotica.

Well, certainly, I like to write sonnets about anything.

So, in honor of spring:

forsythiaA common shrub -- this bush -- most times is quiteforgettable, a bunch of sticks with leaves,possessing nothing to commend its sightor causes us to believe that it deceivesby hiding underlying wondrousness.And so it has been used to mark a linebetween two lands, or fill some space, or dressa fence with greenery -- we could malignits role if not for what it does in spring.For then, before the heat of summer takescontrol, the vernal equinox will bringits petals forth, so lemon-bright it makesa goldfinch pale! For days it glorifiesthe hedge, until it fades into disguise.

"Dr Jeffrey Mangel, a Darwin Initiative research fellow based in Peru, and Professor Brendan Godley,
from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University's Penryn Campus, were part of a team
of researchers who found that attaching green battery powered light-emitting diodes (LED) to gillnets
used by a small-scale fishery reduced the number of green turtle deaths by 64 per cent, without
reducing the intended catch of fish."

Each light only cost around two dollars. So this shows the truth of the saying, "Sometimes
you have to spend a little to save a lot" -- in this case, a lot of sea turtles.

The other day I realized, while listening to Prokofiev's well-known and well-worn orchestral
showpiece "Kije's Wedding" on a collection of symphonic pops tunes, I realized I didn't
know what he looked like. So I looked him up. Here's a picture and a portrait. The portrait is by Igor Grabar.

I happened to find this fairy-tale cute lighthouse outside Oslo Harbor, Norway. It's called the Kavringen Lighthouse, and it's located next to a very small islet that's also a wildlife refuge, called Kavringen.

It has a small wooden top, that looks similar to the steeple of a stave church.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

I don't think that the scientists who advocated for, and managed to launch, the New Horizons mission to Pluto had any idea that it would be so darned strange. But it turns out to be. Lots of papers came out in Science this week, and you can try and find then and read them if you want and have the ability to, but I thought the summary from NASA of the top 9 findings (thus far) was sufficient.

The distribution of compositional units on Pluto’s surface – from nitrogen-rich, to methane-rich, to water-rich – has been found to be surprisingly complex, creating puzzles for understanding Pluto’s climate and geologic history. The variations in surface composition on Pluto are unprecedented elsewhere in the outer solar system.

Of course, we can't really see the surface of the gas giants (not that we expect them to be that interesting), and as I recall, Neptune's moon Triton was unusual, too. But I guess Pluto is still stranger.

Pluto shows its atmospheric layers

That's what science is for - to investigate, to discover, and to find out there are still questions that don't have easy answers.

It's not unusual for supermodels to have kids. I've noted many of those that have here in my posts. And most of them have looked pretty darn good during the child-growing process, too Miranda Kerr, Alessandra Ambrosio, Lily Aldridge, Doutzen Kroes, Brooklyn Decker, Adriana Lima are just some of those that have given birth. After all, they're stunningly sexy, and that generally inveigles the male to want to engage in the procreative act. And when the model assents, impregnation can ensue.

In the present, we know that Chrissy Teigen is soon to bear a child fathered by John Legend, and we're glad for her because it took them awhile to get that to happen. And apparently (though not quite truly officially confirmedly), Behati Prinsloo is preggers with husband Adam Levine having supplied the male chromosomes. Finally, and officially, recent face-of-the-brand Candice Swanepoel has gotten a baby started, too.

"Designed by Albert Dow in a French Empire mansard style, Pomham Rocks lighthouse has seven rooms and a 42 foot tower. It was first lit on December 1, 1871 with a sixth order Fresnel lens showing a fixed white light."

So this one is easy to find -- just go to East Providence and look out on the river.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Every year Sports Illustrated comes out with a swimsuit issue. I think there are millions of people who are aware of that. And several years ago, SI came up with the idea of having their models pose NUDE, but artfully presented with painted-on imitations of swimsuits, rather than actual swimwear, which they frequently pose with, rather than wearing.

But admittedly it was fascinating to see these gorgeous models not-quite-nude, wearing their faux painted swimwear. And the artistry was pretty remarkable - not to mention the patience of both artists and model in getting it done.

One year, when there was a soccer World Cup in 2010, they had the very bright idea of having several of the more outstanding WAGs (Wives and Girlfriends) of various players wear paint, not exactly swimwear, but imitations of sportswear. Peter Crouch's phenomenal wife Abbey Clancy was one of the featured WAG/models.

Well, even though Abbey was fabulous, I thought the real revelation was Melissa Satta, who was at the time the WAG of Christian Vieri, and now is is the WAG of Kevin Prince-Boateng of Ghana. For it was most obvious with her, of the four featured WAGs, that her remarkable figure was painted, and not actually wearing clothes.

So, rather than revisit here the body paint pictures (though admittedly I was forced to review them before writing this), I thought I'd provide an example of her more recent post-baby modeling, which is very, very appealing.

Being a person who was growing up in the 60s and 70s, I was a person that liked the big symphonic rock of bands like Yes, and Electric Light Orchestra, and Queen, and Rush, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. So I was very unhappy to learn about Keith Emerson's suicide.

I like the contrast he draws between Ted Cruz and Lamar Smith. Smith thinks it bad to "alter" data, which is his word demonstrating he doesn't understand the meaning of calibration and bias reduction. And it's also pointed out that satellite data, which Cruz was claiming was the best we have and doesn't show global warming (which ain't true any more), is adjusted more than surface thermometer data. So it's bad according to the Smith criterion.

So ultimately, everything is showing its getting warmer. Unless you're a true denier, in which case nothing will.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

No, it's not an evil cross between a novel by Ernest Hemingway and an H.P. Lovecraft horror story. It's actually about Pluto (not the underworld god of Roman mythology), but the minor planet just visited by the New Horizons spacecraft.

On reviewing the pictures, the scientists think they've spotted methane snow on some of Pluto's higher mountains, in the Cthulhu Regio.

Monday, March 14, 2016

Every now and then, I try to find a Google Street View shot of a landmark. I've got a few more of these I'll demonstrate, but I'm starting with two in South Dakota (both of which I've seen): the profile of George Washington on Mount Rushmore, and Bear Butte, an outpost of the Black Hills to the east of the main range.

So here they are. Now here's the thing: they're live. So if you click on them, they move. And you can pan around and see what's around there. In the Washington profile shot, there's a group of bikers stopped on either side of the road at the viewpoint.

"With the theory of a presidential nominee as a wrecking ball, we have reached the culmination of the founders’ fears: Democracy is producing a genuine threat to the American form of self-government. Trump imagines leadership as pure act, freed from reflection and restraint. He has expressed disdain for religious and ethnic minorities. He has proposed restrictions on press freedom and threatened political enemies with retribution. He offers himself as the embodiment of the national will, driven by an intuitive vision of greatness. None of this is hidden."

Been wondering for a while when ready-to-pop Morena Baccarin (who was great in Deadpool) was going to deliver her baby, fathered by Ben McKenzie (co-star on Gotham).

Yeah, it was a co-star romance, extramarital and premarital, and she's trying to disentangle from her first marriage, which involved a kid, too. A bit awkward, but M&M seem to be pretty happy right now. I hope that continues.

It turns out the baby was born March 2, and they just took awhile to announce it. Thank God - I thought she was 50 weeks pregnant.

I've ventured far away from the good ol' USA in search of lighthouses, and found many great ones. So I decided to come back to the states, and quickly asked myself, "What's the closest lighthouse to Chicago?"

Well, the lighthouse at the entrance to Chicago Harbor pretty much has to be, doesn't it?

Thursday, March 10, 2016

I like sustainable fisheries where the fish aren't over-exploited. So I usually support farmed salmon, and it's one of the fish I'm comfortable consuming. The fact that it tastes great doesn't hurt in the slightest.

So I read this article about the problems the Chile salmon fishery is having with some trepidation. It's not clear if they can recover it. I'm hoping that they can.

But what has international fish buyers most worried — and stock prices tumbling — is that the algal bloom appears to be ongoing. Salmon growers are still tallying their losses, and as of this week more than 20 million fish, representing 15 percent of Chile’s total annual salmon production, have been asphyxiated, or perhaps poisoned by the blooms (the jury is still out on that question). The figures are still climbing."

Further down in the article, it states that about a third of the U.S. imports of salmon have been from Chile.

So here's the other problem (aside from volcanoes and environmental abuses):

"But the biggest shakeup — aside from September’s 8.3 magnitude earthquake — came last July when U.S. retail giant Costco dropped the bulk of its Chilean contracts in favor of Norwegian-bred salmon, citing Chile’s heavy-handed use of antibiotics."

So, for several reasons, Chile needs to clean up its salmon fishery/industry.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Even though the juvenile sissies running the Republican party's side of Congress have said that they won't consider any person President Obama nominates for the Supreme Court, that doesn't meant the Prez won't do it. And he should, if only to demonstrate the dishonorable recalcitrance of McConnell and Co.

"The candidates under consideration include two judges who joined the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2013, Sri Srinivasan and Patricia A. Millett; Jane L. Kelly, an Iowan appointed that year to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit; Paul J. Watford, a judge since 2012 on the California-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit; and a lower-court judge, Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed in 2013 to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia."

"Another name being vetted by the White House is one with a longer judicial record: Merrick Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. He is a moderate who has served on the court for nearly two decades and was considered by Obama for a previous Supreme Court vacancy."

So, should a judge as esteemed and experienced as the honorable Merrick Garland become a piñata, John Cornyn?

The mysteries of time have not becloud-ed my remembrances -- and I would notwant to forget a single moment, proudor only ordinary, cold or hot,mundane or blind spectacular -- and yetI here admit I truly cherish mostyour vividness of nudity. My debtbelongs to you, for acting as my hostand giving me incentive to replywith avid affirmation, unrestrainedand recognizable; I could not try to toss these memories -- they are ingrainedwithin the nature of my self, and staysafe from the grind of time's erosive way.

I checked to see if there were lighthouses in Mexico's Baja California peninsula. There are actually quite a few of them. Many of them aren't all that picturesque.

The San Felipe lighthouse is fairly picturesque, but there aren't many pictures of it from other than one angle. So below are three pictures from basically the same angle, but at taken at different times and seasons (maybe). Note: don't confuse this lighthouse with the one in Puerto Rico. The Lighthouse Directory says it's a 72-foot high tower, and isn't sure when it was built.

Where's San Felipe? Well, this beach town has it's own Web site, and the Web site has maps. (You can find out more from that link if you want to.)

Thursday, March 3, 2016

There isn't much to celebrate, conservation-wise, in terms of the slow degradation of the world's natural environment. Even though it has been shown that preserves, which basically reduce exploitation of a species to zero and protect its habitat, work (particularly in the oceans), most natural populations of animals and plants are declining. Some of these declines are drastic and some are minimal, depending on how resilient and adaptable a particular organism is.

So it is a bit heartening to read about a good year for the monarch butterfly, which has been in serious decline. It has shown a bit of a comeback in its wintering grounds in Mexico this year. We need all the good news we can get, and monarchs need more milkweed.

"The orange and black butterfly covered 4.01 hectares (9.9 acres) of pine and fir forest in the 2015-2016 season, more than tripling last year’s figure of 1.13 hectares, Mexican, US and Canadian officials said."

I was inspired to write this sonnet by the end of the nude Playmate of the Month in Playboy magazine. I hope they know what they've done.

"nudity lost - the passing of the Playmates"

She symbolized a gap unbridgeablebetween an ideality of near-ness and the simply unattainable(though most of us, like me, would find her dearand unforgettable). We'd make a datewith her upon our calendar, a namewe would not know, a mate we would await,'til she displayed herself for our acclaimand spiced our fantasies with her appeal.She now abides within a pantheonof womanhood, untouched by time; both real,angelic, and sublime -- and yet the con-sequence is that these vaunted membershipsare closed, as we unloose our loving grips.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Ever since October, I've been chronicling both the sea surface temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region of the Pacific Ocean, and the Temperature of the Lower Troposphere (TLT) satellite data product from Remote Sensing Systems (remss.com). I've been comparing the progression of the really big El Niño event of 1997-1998 and the really, really big El Niño event of 2015-2016. These two events have had a remarkable parallel progression every month since then.

Until now.

In January, it appeared that the TLT would threaten its previous all-time highs from 1998 in February and subsequent months. But I didn't know for sure, obviously. The unique weather patterns over the U.S. were indicative of major influence, but until the data comes in, there was no certainty.

That has changed. There's a particular reason that I was interested in the REMSS TLT -- it's because it has been the featured go-to satellite temperature data set of climate denial, because (partly due to a global warming slowdown in the first decade of the 21st century) it was used to claim that there hasn't been global warming for a period of several years. That claim was made despite the surface temperature record warming substantially, and a massive collection of phenological data.

When I started making the plots, I could see that the TLTs in 2015 were about 0.2 deg C higher than in 1998, a "baseline" warming that is consistent with what the surface record was showing. So when the TLTs started heading up, it was easy to anticipate that the peak could be roughly 0.2 deg C higher than in 1998.

Well, it sure is.

It could go even higher. But as of now, the February 2016 TLT is the highest ever recorded in the REMSS data, and the climate deniers can't say that there's been no global warming any more. And like in 1998, these high El Niño, err, fossil fuel-fueled temperatures are going to yank that trend upward.

The last bastion has fallen.

One note about this plot; I averaged the four weekly Niño 3.4 SST anomalies to get the SST anomaly for February, so I may adjust it slightly when the official monthly temperature is announced in a couple of days.

I never ever heard of the blind cave salamanders of Slovenia, called olms, until I read this article. They're also called baby dragons. But now I'm hoping that the eggs described in the article survive to hatch successfully.

I learned a lot quickly - they are in the genus Proteus, and there aren't any other animals in that genus. And they are only found in a few select caves in Slovenia.

So here's the articles, first found via Twitter, then in the inimitable Daily Mail. The latter is better illustrated.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Japan has quite a few lighthouses (as might be expected) - this one is nicely placed on its own island. Here's some excerpts about it from the Lighthouse Directory:

"1870: Active; focal plane 51 m (267 ft); two white flashes every 16 s. 23 m (75 ft) round stone tower with lantern and gallery, rising from a circular 1-story stone keeper's house. Lighthouse painted with black and white horizontal bands. Oldest Western-style lighthouse surviving in its original form in Japan. It was declared a national historic site in 1969. Located on a small rocky islet about 12 km (7.5 mi) south southwest of Shimoda harbor."

I watch the CW superhero TV show "Arrow". I've noted that before, and I've also noted the comeliness of
some of the actresses on the show, particularly Emily Bett Rickards and Katie Cassidy. Willa Holland
also has some appeal of the willowy kind.

Recently Arrow brought on TV veteran Charlotte Ross. I've known about Charlotte for a long time,
from her days as a scheming teen ingenue on "Days of Our Lives" (see what I did there?) to her
rocker show "The Heights", and then a multi-year stint on "NYPD Blue". She's made some other short continuing
roles, a couple on "Glee" and also on a show called "Hit the Floor", which I never heard of
before. (It was about Laker Girls dancers and was on VH1, according to IMdB.)

Now, she's approaching 50 and she's an Illinois girl (just had to note that), but even though she's
been cast as Felicity's mom, she's definitely displaying some ILF attributes in this motherly
role. Still a very beautiful, sexually appealing woman.

So, let's show a shot of her on "Arrow", indicating why I'm writing this, and I'll also support
her activism by showing her noteworthy appearance for PETA. I don't support everything PETA stands for,
but hey, I like the way they use celebrities in their ads.